Blood Stain

by Peter Lalor

  —Shit, Saunders. What the bloody hell happened to you? You look like you’ve been in World War Three. Fuck, mate!

  Saunders was in no mood to talk about the terrible state of his head.

  —Yeah, yeah … C’mon, let’s go.

  They pulled up at the service station and Dave went inside to buy his lunch. He came back with a pack of orange slice biscuits. Wilton called him a silly prick. He’d lend him money if he needed it. ‘I’d give him whatever I had in my pocket, he’s that sort of bloke and he’d do the same for you.’

  Saunders grunted and told him to keep driving.

  That night coming home from work, Dave was ready to talk about it. He began in his usual elliptical fashion.

  —You ever been ironed out?

  —What?

  —Have you ever been ironed out?

  Saunders went on to tell the story about Saturday night and how he had been sleeping in the car ever since, too frightened to return. Wilton, like a few of his mates, wondered why he kept going back. After all she’d cut his dog’s throat, stabbed him, ironed him out… surely a bloke knows when he’s had enough. Saunders told him, and anyone else who asked, that he’d been fucked in Asia and fucked all around Australia, but none of them had ever been as good as Kath. Of course there’s being fucked and being fucked. She had him sorted on both scores.

  Dave’s mates, like Kellett’s before him, were suspicious of Kath, or Big Red as they called her. Some were just plain frightened. She was like a guard dog around him and didn’t like them coming close. As far as she was concerned they kept him out drinking and led him into trouble.

  Her carousing cousin, Brian Conlon, got caught up in their domestics more than once. He recalls one time pulling Saunders away from Kath and being knocked down, cutting his leg on the heater for his trouble. Saunders was not a tough guy and Conlon came back and knocked him out. When Saunders came to he called the police and the warring trio filled in the time by arguing about who should leave the house. It was all pretty pissy and pathetic.

  The attacks on Saunders became so regular that Wilton and the car pool guys began taking bets on what sort of injury he would have that day. One day they picked up Dave and he had a cut to his stomach from where she had stabbed him with scissors. Kath and he were arguing in the morning when she turned on him with the scissors. Again he left the house and found refuge at a mate’s place. The cut was bleeding and Dave wanted the guy to stitch it up for him. This was giving a new definition to domestic violence and the boys in the car pool thought it was pretty funny, but even this hard drinking group of miners had an uneasy feeling about Big Red and her temper. Ron Wilton told Wells that Saunders was a gentle guy.

  David and I worked together at Hunter Valley Number One Coal Mine during the 1980s. During this time we travelled together in a car crew to and from work with a number of other men. During the time that I have known David I would describe him as being a quiet, honest, passive man.

  As well as working with David, I socialised together with him. David would drink beer, but I never saw him aggressive towards anyone with alcohol in him. I never saw David involved in fights or other arguments at the local hotel or club.

  Another member of the car pool, Dave Fittock, remembers numerous incidents when they’d pick him up in the morning and there’d be bruises and cuts to the little bloke’s face. Fittock recalls Saunders with stitches in his hand, facial injuries, broken ribs and on and on. The coal miner says all the violence was one-way. He knew Dave well as his mate was married to his aunty for twenty years before meeting Kath and there had never been any problems there. They had three kids and the nephew wasn’t aware of any violence in the relationship, which was different to what was going on now. ‘I saw that there was a lot of violence. This violence was not by David towards Kathy, but by Kathy towards David.’

  Saunders reckons the broken ribs weren’t from her but from a mate of her brother’s who got him in a pub one night. It was only a matter of degrees of separation. Wilton, like most people, was scared of Kath. Years later he told the police of his method for detecting her moods.

  Although I knew David well, I did not know Kathy all that well. I would see them out together at the Bowling Club, but I never witnessed any physical violence between them. There was one thing that I could tell about Kathy and that was when she was unhappy, her complexion would change. She would become red in the face and her facial expression would change.

  You could tell from this expression that she was not happy and when I saw it I would not approach her or David.

  Katherine had developed an ability to involve a bloke’s mother in her dramas. On one occasion Saunders had gone up to play bowls at the local club and was wearing his late father’s bowling clothes. When he got home she had the shits again and had locked him out. After a while he got in and she flew at his head. ‘She took plenty of bark off me face, she could throw a punch. Kath was bloody strong.’

  Then she was on the phone to his mother, telling her that her son was a cunt and he’d been beating her. Saunders’ mum came down and saw the state of her boy’s face. She took him away to fix him up. While they were gone Kath took to his clothes, chopping them all up. Every single item, leaving him only what he was wearing. Dave’s dad had served in the war and had a special limited edition book produced by his regiment. Kath destroyed that too.

  There were so many beatings Saunders found himself lying to hide what was going on. One day his injuries were so bad he told people he’d rolled the car on the weekend.

  There are two sides to every story and Kath’s time with Dave Saunders went down in the annals of Knight family history as one where she was abused and beaten by a drunken maniac. That was the way that she told it, anyway.

  Saunders carries the scars from too much drinking and hard living, but has a gentleness that would appear to back his claims that he never hit Kath.

  If I was to do something wrong I’d admit it. If I fucked up in the pub or something I’d be up there first thing in the morning apologising to everyone. Not that I’ve ever had to, but I would. I never hurt Kath. She was the one doing all the damage.

  He is the sort of bloke who apologises at the drop of a hat and appears genuine and honest. His first wife had no complaints. Nor his second. Yet when Detectives Wells and Ford interviewed Knight she painted a different picture of her relationship with Saunders, including predictable allegations of child abuse, which have never been substantiated and are almost certainly untrue. Ford asked her what she had done about the sex abuse allegations.

  —I spoke to the woman he was living with to keep her eye on him.

  —And who was that?

  —Glenda Reichel.

  —… Do you know when you spoke to Glenda Reichel about him?

  —No. ‘Cause she was gunna punch my head in there one day at the pub.

  —This relationship with Dave Saunders. How did that end?

  —With him punching me.

  —Was it just a lot of violence in that relationship?

  —There was on his part. I just kept calling the police every time he hit me.

  —All right. Was there ever a, an incident with Dave Saunders’ dog?

  —Yes.

  —Can you tell me about that incident?

  —He laid his steel cap boots into me one day when I told him I was pregnant. I went out and cut his dog’s throat.

  —Did it go any further or did you, did you see …?

  —I ended up having my nerves treated, but at that stage I had just lost mother through ballooned arteries and I touched her and the smell that come away from her was something terrible.

  —When you cut the dog’s throat, did the dog, was the dog dead?

  —It was a clean cut, they said.

  If Kath drove like she answered questions she’d clip trees on both sides of the road. Pleased to hear it was a clean cut, Wells continued questioning her on the incident about the dog.

  —Did you say anything to David at
the time you did that?

  —He said to me to kill him and I threw the knife away and picked up a frying pan and hit him over the head with it.

  —Did, do you recall saying anything to him, though, about it?

  —The dog, he seen it.

  Knight told psychiatrist Dr Robert Delaforce that she believed for two months that Saunders had killed the dog and later learned it had been her. She expressed some regret, which was highly unusual.

  —It was very cruel, vicious… It’s all still vague. I’ve shut it out.

  Knight told her next partner that Saunders was violent so she cut his dog’s throat. That was that. She told her neighbour, Gerrie Edwards, a woman who bought the shop next door in MacQueen Street in 1995, about the dog business.

  Katherine spoke to me about one of her ex-partners. I can’t remember exactly what was said but it was similar to: ‘He hurt me and I hit him over the head with a frypan and slit his dog’s throat.’ When Katherine told me this I became wary of her and she scared me … Basically I kept to myself because over the time that I had known Katherine I found her to be weird, in that she justified her actions for things she had done by saying ‘they deserved it’. I got the impression that as long as Katherine believed that her actions were right, it didn’t matter what society thought.

  John Price’s daughter, Rosemary Biddle, asked her about the dog and Kath said, ‘It fucking bit me and I slit its throat. I have nothing against animals.’ Rosemary doesn’t buy the story. ‘That’s crap, ‘cause we’d be in her van going down to get bread and milk and if she saw a cat or a dog, she’d swerve to hit it.’

  Such stories cause psychiatrists to shudder. John Travers, one of the men convicted of raping and killing Sydney nurse Anita Cobby, would slit sheep’s throats as a party trick. Travers had also been employed at the local abattoir. Gregory Allan Brown, the man who burned down the Kings Cross Backpackers, enjoyed dropping live chooks into an incinerator and listening to the panicked flapping of their wings as they died. Cruelty to animals is always a disturbing trait and Katherine Knight certainly exhibited that: the nicking of arteries at the abattoir, the dingo, the strays on the road. On a more passive scale she filled her house with trophies from dead animals, skins, skulls, horns and the like. She said they were beautiful and weren’t dead to her.

  Knight told the psychiatrist Dr Robert Delaforce that she had called the police five to ten times as a result of Saunders’ violence, that she had photos and videos of injuries inflicted by him, that he had damaged walls in the house and thrown a bassinette onto the baby but the police wouldn’t charge him. She claims he mentally abused her children.

  Melissa and Natasha were going to school in Aberdeen when he came into their lives. They called him Dave. He cannot recall any animosity with Kath’s kids but they backed their mother’s story when the police asked. Melissa Kellett paints a bleak picture of the time.

  From day one the abuse was there. He would drink and pick on Mum. Then he would pick on us kids and Mum would step in to defend us and cop it worse. He got Mum’s esteem down very low with his abuse and he used to ash on her. He would never bath. I remember he would leave dirty undies lying around with extremities [sic] in them. There were several times where he beat her beyond recognition and it got worse and worse.

  There was one time when he kicked her down, kicked her in the stomach to make sure she wasn’t pregnant. I’m not sure which order this happened; whether she killed the dog or tried to overdose, but Mum took a lot of pills to try and kill herself again. I remember all through growing up she was suicidal and taking pills to kill herself. When she went for help all the doctors would give her pills for her nerves. He continued to flog into her. When she attempted to take her life my little sister Natasha found her.

  Around this time she cut Dave Saunders’ dingo or half-dingo’s throat. She doesn’t remember doing that. She had went to Aunty joy’s place with two shotguns in her hands. She doesn’t remember this. She was unsure if she had killed Saunders. She didn’t know it was a dog she had killed. Uncle John and Mum went back to the house in Segenhoe Street and walked through. The house was covered in blood and they were unsure where Saunders was. The police were phoned. Mum then admitted herself into Tamworth psychiatric ward to get help. She didn’t remember the dog. About this time Mum found out that Natasha was being molested by the neighbour.

  We were given to our grandparents again and Mum was in there for about three weeks. After she came out of hospital there was never any follow-up. She was out about a week when she went back to Dave Saunders. I can’t remember her being counselled, only medicated.

  Shortly after that, [Saunders’ daughter] was born to Mum and she bought the house in MacQueen Street, Aberdeen. Mum had been able to buy this house from a compensation work payout and the sale of land in Aberdeen and the sale of the house in Landsborough. Dave was also there with us. The beatings on Mum got worse. One time he took us up to the club near the post office. He had us sitting in the car for hours, When he got back he told us not to tell Mum where he had been. He was really flogging Mum for the next three years. He would beat up on Mum and beat the kids. I remember him pinning her down to the lounge and choking her, but Mum had her hands free and was able to scratch and kick back. I recall her being thrown through the walls. There were massive holes left and splits in the wood.

  During this she was hospitalised several times. There was a lot of violence. He would rip out the phone and nobody would help us, the neighbours or the police. She was with Dave for five to six years. He would beat up on us kids when we stepped in to help Mum or phone for help or ask the next-door neighbours for help.

  Mum and Dave’s relationship finished in 1992 and there was peaceness [sic] in the family.

  Melissa’s recollections tally vaguely with real events, although her allegations of violence by Saunders would seem at best to be highly exaggerated and at worst to be total fabrications promoted by her mother. Melissa said later she has memories of running up the street in her pyjamas because the phone was ripped out of the wall during the fighting. She says the neighbours wouldn’t answer her knocks at the door and she ran to the police who wouldn’t attend because her mother never pressed charges.

  ‘Mum could fight back, but she always came off second best. ‘

  Natasha Kellett also backs her sister’s and mother’s version of events during the Saunders’ years, although without as much detailed recall.

  I can remember seeing my mother being bashed by David. On one occasion, David threw Mum through a wall in the lounge room of the house and also pushed her head through a wall in the master bedroom. These walls had to be repaired when Mum renovated the house about three years ago. Mum and David used to argue a lot, especially when David had been drinking beer. David used to abuse Mum physically and mentally while they were together…

  Kath’s sister Joy tells the same story.

  There was a lot of domestic stuff in this relationship too and as a result of this arguing Kath cut David Saunders’ dog’s throat. David and her were having a blue when she done this … There was always blues and then they just split up because Kath was being bashed by David.

  Except, of course, you don’t just split up with Katherine Knight and perhaps it is in the detail of Saunders’ exit that we see who really was the victim here. Dave snuck away. He was shitting himself at the time and fled into the night like a bashed wife.

  On 3 May 1990, just before midnight, Kath had called the ambulance to the old house and told them she had been beaten by her defacto. She said she had been punched in the stomach and the face and had stomach pains. She said she might be pregnant as she had said the first time they fought. They took her to the Scott Memorial Hospital where she was found to have a slight reddening to the face and neck but no bruising. The doctors thought she might be putting it on, but she said she had ringing in her ears and so she was kept overnight and discharged first thing. Ken picked her up. She wasn’t pregnant.

  Saun
ders moved out with Brian Parsons but that still didn’t give him enough space. The trouble continued. Kath couldn’t sleep when he was gone and she began to stalk him.

  The problem was with Katherine that she always threw me out and then harassed me to return. In the end I couldn’t take it any more. Every time I went back she would just become violent again and we would argue.

  Saunders decided to take radical action. He took long service leave from the mine and told Kath he had to go and do some work for a bloke in Tottenham, but he was actually in Newcastle in hiding with no intention of returning to Aberdeen. He told his best mate the truth and nobody else, and stayed out of town for three months.

  ‘I just figured I was going to keep on copping it, I didn’t think it would end up as bad as Pricey did, but I had to get out. It was the only way I could get out of it. ‘

  Saunders said it broke his heart to leave his daughter behind. It was then that Kath told the kid he was dead. Despite all the violence and grief, Saunders still burns a small candle for Kath.

  I feel sorry for Kathy because she’s a better person that what she’s been. I mean you don’t freak out and do stupid things, that’s why I think that [killing Pricey] was premeditated but what she did after that wasn’t premeditated. She just went with it. She had to get out of her problem.

  At other times he seethes about what she did to his mate Price. Can’t bring himself to say her name. ‘It never showed any remorse. Pricey was one of the nicest blokes you’d ever meet and it killed him and it didn’t seem to give a fuck.’

  On returning from the dead, Saunders began to get some access to his daughter, but the situation was fraught with difficulties and ghosts of violence past. Around 1999 his dog had puppies which were about six weeks old. His daughter saw them during an access visit and wanted one. Dave drove her back to her mum’s place at MacQueen Street with one of the pups in her shirt pocket.

  —Can I keep it, Mum?

  —Go on, Kath, let her have it.